Sunday, January 17, 2016

Well, it’s the first snow of the season, at least for me and
the dogs. Kansas City had some snow over the holidays when were out of town
(Pat is again out of town, missing this); we saw the remains of it on the north
sides of buildings and walls. But this is fresh snow to wake up to; not too
much, only an inch or two, but enough to carpet all the streets and sidewalks
and bushes and grass, and to make it necessary to put on boots for our walk
(for me, not the dogs). Also warm clothes, because it is also about 8 degrees,
which we consider chilly in these parts. Temperatures have been up and down, a
combination of climate change and the fact that KC sits smack in the middle of
several weather systems; last weekend it was even colder (4 with a wind chill
of -13 on Sunday) but it was dry; by Thursday we had a sunny 62! Last night we
were outside on a clear 30 degree night, and I told Becky on the phone how that
was quite pleasant – didn’t really even need gloves. Not this morning, though.

The snow was pretty
virginal, and so Fry, Maggie and I were the first ones to walk in it out of our
building and down the street, although a couple of folks had cleaned paths from
their front yards to the curb. Almost no one shovels their sidewalks, but a
couple of people with snowblowers like to get them out. The real problem
walking dogs in snow is when there is a lot of it, and most people haven’t
cleared their sidewalks so you walk in the street, but the plows have piled the snow up by the curbs making it difficult to get out of the way if cars come careening toward you,
which happens too often. But not a problem today.

It was also Maggie’s first snow-walk with us, although at 5
years old I’m sure she has seen it; we just adopted her after Thanksgiving, to
try to fill some of the hole left by Yonkel’s passing last spring. At first,
and indeed second, glance she looks a lot like Fry, but in reality she is much
stockier and stronger, a combination of golden Lab and Rhodesian Ridgeback, to
Fry’s golden retriever and beagle. She has no ridge on her back, but is a fast powerful runner like that breed. She also pulls a lot walking, but the
Halti collar helps. On the other hand, while she has been known to bolt from
the car and run like a crazy dog for laps around the park, she is too bulky to
get under the fences in the backyard, and is not driven by Fry’s beagle-like
commitment to trying, so I can let her out to run in the yard, while keeping
Fry on the retractable leash.

My friend Barry, the inveterate outdoorsman, says (probably
quoting someone else) that there is no such thing as “too cold”, just “insufficient
gear”. Maybe, but sufficient gear can be bulky and restrict movements a bit.
Not quite like the little brother in “Christmas Story” or
those depicted in cartoons who are so bundled up they cannot move, or wearing
what the now-disgraced Bill Cosby called “idiot mittens”, connected by an
elastic band that ran from one to another across your shoulders under your coat
(so called because ostensibly if someone pulled one, the other smacked you in
your face; I saw but never actually wore these!). But enough so you don’t move
as easily, and frankly taking the gloves off to pick up after the dog can not
only be cold, but occasionally messy.

This is, of course, why one of the woolen gloves I usually
wear is sitting on a towel on the window sill drying slowly, after being washed
out. I hope it dries before it freezes. Obviously, the best way to dry it is on
the radiator, but this requires having radiators, and only one house that I
have lived in since being an adult had them, and it is not this one. Putting it
on top of a forced-air vent would work if they were on the floor, but in this
place they are all in the ceiling. From a physics point of view that makes
sense for the AC (cold air descends) but less for heat. Having them on the
floor can be inconvenient, as small things roll into them, I remember from the
house where I had them, especially when there are small children, but there are
also compensating advantages. I have very “warm” memories of finding my son
Matt downstairs on cold Chicago morning, in his pajamas sitting on such a vent!
(Somewhere there is a picture of this, but I can’t find it, so I’ll just use
one of the two boys crawling around on the floor there.)

So there it is; we’re back in the house, it’s sunny outside,
the dogs are basking in it on the couch, I have brushed the snow off the cars
(nice part about very cold; easy to brush off), I’ll eat breakfast, and maybe soon we’ll have
a fire.